The washroom was cleared of all laundry tubs, copper kettles, and drying racks. That left an empty box-shaped space seven paces long by four paces wide. On the floor flags, Eren Tal had used yellow grease pencils to draw three nested circles. The red danger envelope around the simulated pipe header, the yellow boundary line where the backup observer stood. The green threshold line where the Courtesy Arch frame rested against the back wall. The air smelled of wet stonework, cedar sawdust, and the bitter, damp silt stench rising from the open floor drain.
Tavi stood in the yellow circle, wearing a clean linen smock and holding the lead clapper of the bronze stop-bell in his right hand. The bell itself was bolted to a timber shore three feet above his head. Its polished bronze lip shone in the daylight coming through the low garden window. His hands were damp with sweat, and he kept shifting his weight from one scuffed boot to the other. Across the room, a pot of boiled tea sat on the cold hearth beside a dry sourdough crust, left over from breakfast.
“Remember your station, Tavi,” Eren said. He sat on an upturned ash crate near the door with a pocket watch resting on his knee. “You’re not a spectator watching an exhibition. You’re an instrument of safety. Your sole duty is to watch Sister Merrow’s left wrist. You don’t look at her face. You don’t look at the pipe. You don’t look at the…
